Conspicuous silence on NK defectors` plight

China’s repatriation of North Korean defectors has grown into an international human rights issue. South Korea plans to directly raise the matter at a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Switzerland late this month. In a recent report, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in North Korea also urged countries surrounding the Korean Peninsula to abide by the principles stated in the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees vis-a-vis China’s repatriation of defectors. The call is targeted at China. The U.S. Congress and the Inter-Parliamentary Union have also strongly urged Beijing to respect the human rights of defectors.

Park Sun-young, a lawmaker of the minor conservative Liberty Forward Party who is on a hunger strike in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, submitted a resolution Wednesday to the National Assembly urging Beijing to stop repatriating defectors. The resolution has been signed by 29 lawmakers, including former National Assembly Speaker Kim Hyung-o, so parliament should pass it quickly. South Korean actor Cha In-pyo and comedian Lee Sung-mi have also joined the campaign to oppose repatriation.

Yet pro-North Korea forces in South Korea who formed the South Korean committee on the implementation of the 2000 inter-Korean joint declaration remain silent on the plight of defectors in China, as does the main opposition Democratic United Party. Pro-Pyongyang groups that are members of the committee have turned a blind eye to the defectors, and instead focus on political struggles such as opposing the construction of a naval base on Jeju Island, urging the abolishment of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement, and objecting to regular joint military exercises between Seoul and Washington. “After the arrival in South Korea of 468 North Korean escapees via Vietnam in 2004 caused a one-year standstill in inter-Korean relations, the groups urged (Seoul) to stop human rights groups from organizing escapes by North Koreans,” said one North Korea activist.

Certain pro-North groups are making the same demands as Pyongyang, including the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South, the abolishment of Seoul`s National Security Law, and campaigns against conservatives in election years. They sound like a mouthpiece for the Stalinist country. At a time when certain North Koreans who escaped their country at great risk to their lives are about to be sent to concentration camps after getting caught in China, such groups remain silent while talking about the need for regime stability in the North. The plight of defectors is tied to the groups` very survival, going beyond ideological issues.

South Korea’s ruling Saenuri Party and Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry fortunately agreed at a meeting Thursday to consider issuing South Korean citizenship certificates to defectors in China. Chinese public security authorities consider defectors people without a nationality and treat them as illegal aliens. If Seoul issues documents proving South Korean citizenship for defectors who explicitly express the intention to leave the North or who have relatives in the South, a ray of hope will arise in the defectors` journey to the South.